politicians

www.techdirt.com

Here's a bizarre one. With Poland putting ACTA ratification on hold, and Slovenia apparently regretting its signature, now we've got Romania's Prime Minister, Emil Boc, admitting that he doesn't understand why the country signed ACTA. It appears that opposing politicians are criticizing the government and promising that they will suspend...

thenextweb.com

Indonesia’s government has put its sights on Twitter after claiming that it is “studying” the microblogging site with a view to cracking down on users that it claims are behaving badly on the service. According to a report from the Jakarta Globe, Indonesia’s Communication Minister Tifatul Sembiring is looking to clean...

thenextweb.com

As Britain’s economy enters a ‘double-dip’ recession (much to the dismay of its citizens), the Palace of Westminster has agreed to provide 650 members of parliament with iPads, replacing their old laptops at a cost of at least £260,000 (around $420,000) to the taxpayer. iPads will only be provided to...

www.techdirt.com

It appears that technologically clueless, reactionary politicians blaming the internet for terrorism and demanding ways to censor content are not just limited to US Senators named Lieberman. Nope, it appears that some elected officials over in the UK have similarly allergic reactions to the internet. The Home Affairs Committee in...

gigaom.com

Google, not unexpectedly is an opponent of any legislation that tries to change how the Internet works (as long it is to their advantage, of course) and as such, was very vocal about the dreaded SOPA/PIPA legislations that were being foisted upon the US Internet users. Thanks to our collective (and...

www.guardian.co.uk

Twitter has helped shift the balance of media power from press barons to the people – a true champagne moment, writes John PrescottTuesday marked a turning point for the UK mainstream media. The combined total of people who buy daily national newspapers is 9,002,963. The number of people on Twitter...

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www.techdirt.com

We've certainly talked quite a bit about the institutional-level corruption of the way Congress and lobbying works, but a recent This American Life episode, done in partnership with the Planet Money team takes a much deeper dive into how lobbying works. You absolutely should listen to it. It's really fascinating,...

www.theverge.com

Professor Jim Hansen, one of the world's foremost researchers on the subject of global warming, knows that the earth is facing a human-induced crisis. To stand idly by and do nothing as the effects of pollution jeopardize the future of the planet is an "injustice of one generation to...

thenextweb.com

“Capital C. How the crowd liberates itself” is a new documentary in the works about how crowdfunding is “no longer the nerdy pipe dream of a bunch of Internet geeks”. So naturally the project is on Kickstarter. The basis of the film is how crowdfunding has grown from a source...

www.techdirt.com

We recently wrote about how HR 3523, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act -- or CISPA -- is an incredibly bad bill that would basically make it much, much easier for the government to spy on all sorts of private communications. The bill already has over 100 sponsors, some...

techcrunch.com

Google Hangouts only allows 8 viewers to participate and Ustream allows 0, but with OnTheAir, anyone watching a live stream can video chat with the host in front of the audience. Today OnTheAir’s streaming video platform exits stealth into private beta to power radio call-in shows for the digital age....

arstechnica.com

One of the biggest problems with discussing climate change is that a substantial fraction of the US public can't agree on basic facts. All indications are that the planet has warmed over the last century, yet polls have shown that anywhere from a fifth to a third of US...

torrentfreak.com

Before the net, if you wanted to send a copy of something that was protected under the copyright monopoly, it was an absolute given that you could do so. You would send that copy in the mail without a single thought of repercussions. You could send copies of drawings, you...

techcrunch.com

Once something is on the Internet, it’s typically pretty hard to delete it. Unless somebody retweets a posting to Twitter, though, a deleted tweet is pretty much gone forever. With Politwoops, however, the Sunlight Foundation is now preserving some of these tweets for posterity. Politwoops follows all the 433 official...

searchengineland.com

Did you know that Google spent $5 million to influence politicians just last quarter? And that was doubled from the quarter before and may double again this quarter. Facebook spent a boatload too, but not as much Google. Microsoft spent even more. Issues like the Stop Online Piracy Act, or...

www.theverge.com

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is intended to prevent the flow of counterfeit and pirated goods between nations. The treaty was first signed in Tokyo on October 1, 2011 by the United States, Australia, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, New Zealand, and Morocco, before 22 of the 27 EU...

www.businessinsider.com

Airbnb, the service which lets people rent out couches, rooms, or houses to strangers by the night, sounded like an unlikely sociological experiment to most. Now it's a genuine business phenomenon: The company is announcing today that it has booked a total of 10 million nights since it launched in...

www.techdirt.com

Last week we saw the Socialists and Democrats, the second-largest bloc in the European Parliament, turn against ACTA. Combined with the stated position of the Green party there, that means ACTA is closer to being thrown out when the vote for ratification takes place in Brussels this summer. The deciding...

www.theverge.com

NASA might have trouble convincing politicians to give it the support it wants in these troubled financial times, but persuading the public is a different matter — for that, the agency (and Neil deGrasse Tyson) can afford to think big. That's exactly what it's done with Pursuit of Light,...

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www.bgr.com

Sexting, or the act of sending sexually explicit messages or photographs between mobile phones, continues to grow increasingly popular. Mobile users often have private photos posted to the Internet without their permission, and politicians and celebrities alike have taken explicit photos that using mobile devices that were eventually leaked....

thenextweb.com

This one is just for fun. Put down that pitchfork and have a chuckle. The Obama tech team, as spotted by the inimitable BuzzFeed, have put together a rather decent Easter egg in the code of their own website. First, the well-known Obama image: And now, the lovely ASCII version from the site:...

www.techdirt.com

Last week, we had a story about the IFPI (the international equivalent of the RIAA) saying that the ACTA protests were trying to "silence the democratic process". You might have thought that was bad enough, but here's worse. Netzpolitik.org points us to leaked internal minutes of a meeting of the...

www.techdirt.com

Well, it looks like all the fearmongering about hackers shutting down electrical grids and making planes fall from the sky is working. No matter that there's no evidence of any actual risk, or that the only real issue is if anyone is stupid enough to actually connect such critical infrastructure...

Comments on 'Politicians, retailers push for new Internet sales taxes':

www.techdirt.com

One reason the European Commission decided to refer ACTA to the European Court of Justice may have been in the hope that people would simply get bored and move on. It's certainly true that the cities of Europe aren't full of protesters as they were a couple of months ago,...

Comments on 'ACTA On Hold, But The Protests Continue In Serbia':

www.theverge.com

The public poll by Time Magazine on the most influential person in 2012 has come up with an unexpected winner — internet campaign activism front Anonymous. The group beat politicians, sportsmen, and Louis C.K. to the top of the list, though allegations of foul play suggest that all might...